Practice Away From The Trumpet

So I know there is an excersice where you blanace the end of a pencil in your lips with it pointed away from you for lip strength and that you can do different breathing excersices without the trumpet, but do you guys have any other techniques to improve my trumpet playing without the trumpet? Stuff to do maybe if my lips are gone after playing or stuff to do while doing something such as watching tv?

Re: Practice Away From The Trumpet

Any time you are not concentrating on ONE THING, you are not developing good habits. Watching TV while practicing anything is a waste of time. It is possible to train scales (fingering) without playing. If we consider the most asked questions "range and sound" there is NOTHING off horn that will help. We need THOUSANDS of repetitions to get those down.

Re: Practice Away From The Trumpet

Well, one of my friends buzz'z without the mouthpiece and I tried it, it takes double the effort to hit the same note, its hard, do it when your not playing, as in you dont have enough lip to play but you want to buzz, its helping me improve strength wise

Re: Practice Away From The Trumpet

I like to learn pieces, etudes, etc. off the horn. I look at the music, breathe (in time), blow and articulate while I finger along (with the horn, if possible). It saves me from having to wear out my chops learning notes and rhythms. Also (and probably best), it's easy to start thinking about the phrasing and musicality while breathing and blowing since there's no technique to worry about. For me it really speeds up the process of learning new music or getting ready for a last minute gig.

You can also practice multiple tonguing off the horn. Some say to blow along with the tuku, tutuku (or whatever sylable you like to use) and some say to speak "TUKU" out loud. Whichever works best for you, it's a great way to work on it. As a little kid I liked to imitate the sound of a steam engine, so I did this a lot and I've always had a very quick and clean mulitple tongue. I practiced on the horn a lot, but I think the off the horn practice helps too.

Re: Practice Away From The Trumpet

Thank you all for what you've given me so far. I should have thought about the concentration thing though. I will be dedicating time to stuff like this right after and maybe some right before trumpet practice sessions then. Either way if its not improving my sound or range as long as it can still help me musically I will do it if I don't have a horn available or my lips are gone.

Re: Practice Away From The Trumpet

Originally Posted by rowuk

Any time you are not concentrating on ONE THING, you are not developing good habits. Watching TV while practicing anything is a waste of time. It is possible to train scales (fingering) without playing. If we consider the most asked questions "range and sound" there is NOTHING off horn that will help. We need THOUSANDS of repetitions to get those down.

Rowuk,

I mostly agree, especially with the "concentrating on ONE THING" bit, however, I think that there are things we can do away from the horn to help our sound. Primarily, I think we need to listen to singers. I think that listening to vocalists is an under rated thing in our world.